“Gallus Apud Belgas” the Douai Moralia (1603) Reconsidered

CORE Prejeto / received: 6. 5. 2015.Metadata, Odobreno citation / accepted and :similar 4. 6. 2015 papers at core.ac.uk Provided by ZRC SAZU Publishing (Znanstvenoraziskovalni center - Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti) “GALLUS APUD BELGAS” THE DOUAI MORALIA (1603) RECONSIDERED MARC DESMET Université de Saint-Etienne Izvleček: Zbirka Moralia (Nürnberg, 1595) je Abstract: The collection of Moralia (Nuremberg, edina izdaja Gallusove glasbe, ki je bila že kmalu 1596) is the only volume of Handl’s music to have po njegovi smrti ponatisnjena, in to v Douaiju, been republished shortly after the composer’s mestu, ki leži daleč od srednjeevropskega pros- lifetime, and this in Douai, a city very distant tora, v katerem so skladateljeva dela sicer najbolj from the Central European area where Handl’s razširjena. Prispevek ocenjuje kakovost tega music was most widely circulated. The nature novega natisa v primerjavi z izvorno izdajo. of the new print is discussed in relation to the editio princeps. Ključne besede: Douai, Jacobus Handl - Gallus, Keywords: Douai, Jacobus Handl-Gallus, Ge- Georgius Handl, Alexander Philipp Dietrich, org ius Handl, Alexander Philipp Dietrich, Jean Jean Bogard. Bogard. The collection of Moralia by Jacobus Handl-Gallus (1550–1591), which appeared in Douai in 1603,1 could probably be taken for a new publication within the printed music market of the Southern Low Countries. In terms of content, however, it contained nothing different from the original publication brought out in Nuremberg seven years earlier by Alexander Philipp Dietrich.2 These Nuremberg Moralia are the last collection from the composer’s 1 The latest and most accurate study of Handl’s works and sources is Marko Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, where the Douai Moralia are discussed on p. 327. The sole known example of this print, preserved in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) in Paris, has been scanned and is accessible online free of charge via the BnF digitized items website, Gallica, on the web page http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b90598111.r=Moralia.langFR. Please refer to this online resource for all mentions of the source in this article. 2 Handl, Moralia (Nuremberg: Alexander Philipp Dietrich, 1596). Motnik, 327. This source is preserved complete in the Ratschulbibliothek Zwickau and the Bibliotheca Fürstenbergiana of Schloss Arnsberg-Herdringen in Germany. Incomplete copies are preserved in Prague and Hradiště u Znojma in the Czech Republic; Augsburg, Kassel and Neustadt an der Orla in Germany; the British Library in London; Warsaw and Lublin in Poland; Stockholm and Uppsala in Sweden. The Augsburg example, preserved almost complete with five out of its six partbooks, has been scanned. Six specimen pages (title page, index and first two pages of the Cantus II section of 67 DeMusicaD_11_03.indd 67 25/09/2015 08:34:26 De musica disserenda XI/1–2 • 2015 own time to have been published under his name. They form an entertaining succession of forty-seven secular Latin pieces written for five, six and eight parts on texts taken either from classical authors such as Ovid, Virgil and Martial or from anonymous medieval and early Renaissance adagia. Varied in their scale and form of setting, these pieces also differ from one another in style. We find in these light compositions some of Handl’s finest achievements in the refinement of expression, such as Dido’s lament “Dulces exuviae” (no. 43), taken from Virgil’s Aeneid, and two praises of music “Musica noster amor” (no. 28), and “Musica musarum germana” (no. 29), where Handl seems to display a summa of his art in its multiple aspects. We also find examples of what comes closest to scansionà l’antique in the whole of his oeuvre, such as “Quid petitur sacris” (no. 8), on a text from Ovid’s Ars amatoria, among many other pieces.3 A number of the pieces adopt the simple form of a couplet, and these sound like proverbs, delivered musically in a variety of lighter forms and replete with irony.4 The term Moralia was itself proposed by the composer explicitly to affirm the moral character of these compositions, as opposed to the more sensual and lyrical world of the madrigal.5 In this respect, the volume of Moralia formed a complement to the collection issued only a short time earlier by Handl: the Harmoniae morales published in three books in Prague in 1589–1590, which contained fifty-three similar pieces, all written in four parts.6 The fact that this masterpiece should have been reprinted is not in itself surprising. What is more remarkable is that these Moralia are unique in this respect within Handl’s vast printed oeuvre. No Mass by him,7 not a single volume of his Opus musicum,8 nor even the Harmoniae morales collection, was ever reprinted9 – a fact that makes one wonder: why the Moralia? The place of the new publication may also appear unexpected: why Douai? Although this city appears to have been home to several printers, it never became the Cantus partbook) are accessible free of charge from the web page: http://nbn-resolving.de/ urn:nbn:de:0185-schl2493. The entire digitized source can also be ordered against payment from the same page via the Harald Fischer Verlag Download service. 3 The strict declamatory style is probably the outstanding feature of the entire collection. 4 Thirty-one pieces out of forty-seven are composed on texts taking the form of a couplet. 5 See Handl, Harmoniae morales, vol. 1, fol. 2. In the foreword that Handl wrote for the Harmoniae morales he proclaimed: “instead of the name of madrigals, I substitute for these works the more adequate term Moralia, and wish from now on that they be called thus, so that their moral aspect should become as little licentious as possible, and that they should even shun the shadow of obscenity” (“et Madrigalium loco substitutum laetiorem hunc cantum, MORALIA, inscribo, sicque ut deinceps vocentur opto; quod potissima pars morum sit minimè lascivorum, sed qui obscoenitatis etiam umbram reformident”). 6 See Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 326–327. The complementarity of the two collections is also implied by the numerically perfect sum of their combined content: fifty-three pieces (Harmoniae morales), plus forty-seven pieces (Moralia) form a corpus of exactly one hundred secular compositions. 7 Four books of Masses were published in 1580 in Prague under the title of Selectiores quaedam missae, pro Ecclesia Dei non inuiles. See Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 322–323. 8 Published in four books between 1586 and 1591 under the title of Tomus primus [–quartus] musici operis. See Motnik, Jacob Handl-Gallus, 323–326. 9 The unsold copies of the fourth book of Opus musicum came to be sold again as Sacrae cantiones in 1597, but constitute neither a reprint nor a new edition (on this point, see below, p. 74). 68 DeMusicaD_11_03.indd 68 25/09/2015 08:34:26 Marc Desmet: “Gallus apud Belgas” an important centre for music printing on a par with Prague, the cradle of most of Handl’s printed production. Moreover, Douai was actually situated quite far from Handl’s place of residence, and equally far from the Central European area where his work was published, copied, appreciated and most widely circulated. The dates also raise questions of their own: the original Moralia print was published in 1596: that is, five years after the composer’s death. This lapse of time appears somewhat long, since the music must certainly have been ready in 1591 at the very latest. The fact that this collection was published not in Prague, like all Handl’s earlier volumes, but in Nuremberg, suggests that some difficulties occurred during the process. On the other hand, the seven years that separate the Douai edition from the first, Nuremberg edition – hardly longer than the interval separating the composition of the pieces from their first edition – appears, in contrast, to be a rather short gap. Why republish the Moralia so quickly? And, once again, why choose solely this volume from the whole of the composer’s output? Today a secondary city of northern France, Douai was at the beginning of the seventeenth century at the peak of its intellectual and artistic splendour. Belonging at that time, together with the whole of Flanders, to the Spanish Netherlands governed by the Madrid Habsburgs, it was situated not far from the French border, and within the space of a few decades was granted several important institutions that would enhance its Catholic character. This included a university founded in 1559, whose influence rose to a peak during the early seventeenth century.10 In the face of the “dangerous” example of neighbouring France, which had been beset by religious turmoil for almost forty years, and where freedom of confession had finally been granted to Protestants by Henry IV in 1598, Douai developed as a centre for the Counter-Reformation under the leadership of the Jesuits, hosting in its many colleges students in Theology, Law, Medicine and the Arts. It also became an important cultural centre of studies for English-speaking Catholics, ensuring higher education at a convenient geographical location situated close enough to the English Channel. It is in this context of Jesuit influence that the printing trade developed in Douai, with the transfer of technology and craftsmanship mostly coming from more important centres within the Southern Low Countries. Jacques Boscard (d. 1580) and Jean Bogard (ca. 1531–1616) both came from Leuven; Balthazar Bellère came from Antwerp. The last two men also printed music.11 If we join the strict Catholic allegiance of the city to the rapid development of the printing industry, it is no surprise to discover in the 1603 edition of the Moralia a short report from the censor stating that nothing in the collection offended 10 On the singular history of the university in Douai, see Dehon, L’Université de Douai dans la tourmente, esp.

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